Standard taxonomies are presently used to facilitate communication within an entity and between multiple entities and/or applications by providing a controlled language for defining a particular domain. Such standard taxonomies are often very large, providing an extensive number of categories, descriptors, subcategories, and the like. As such, not all of the categories in a standard taxonomy may be needed by an entity accessing the standard taxonomy, and even a well-defined subset of categories, such as all categories in a given branch of the standard taxonomy, may not be adequate for a particular application.
For example, a standard taxonomy may be used to define a domain for e-commerce, a domain for manufacturing, a domain for media products, and various other particular domains. Such a standard taxonomy may also be accessed so that different entities can communicate with each other. In other words, the standard taxonomy provides a standard and/or common language for communicating effectively and efficiently between different entities and/or applications. However, when different entities/applications are utilizing the same standard taxonomy, only a small portion of the standard taxonomy may be relevant to the entity/application. This is typically addressed by using a query language that allows the entity to retrieve/access a particular, well-defined branch of the taxonomy. For example, an entity may select branch “A” and every category under branch “A” in the taxonomy, while ignoring branches “B” and “C.” In another approach, an entity may select a well-defined level in a taxonomy, such as selecting every category in a particular tier of the taxonomy. However, these approaches are ineffective when an entity prefers to specifically select individual, relevant categories in the standard taxonomy, rather than select a well-defined branch or well-defined level of the taxonomy. As such, no mechanism has been provided to individually select categories and reassemble them into a self-standing hierarchy, which is consistent with the overarching, standard taxonomy.
In addition to including categories that are not relevant to a particular entity's requirements, standard taxonomies often fail to include beneficial categories for identifying specific audience segments. During audience and/or behavioral targeting, standard taxonomy categories incompletely specify an audience segment (e.g. the categories specify the topic of interest without indicating a user's intent vis-à-vis the topic). Often times the categories in the standard taxonomy are manually supplemented with additional information to create more specific targeting segments, as the categories in the standard taxonomy only provide limited information with respect to an audience segment. In one example, a taxonomy used to create audience targeting segments may provide a category, such as “used cars,” without providing an indication of intent for that category, such as purchasing a used car or researching used cars. As such a user may be categorized according to the audience segment for “used cars” without insight into the user's individual intent. Further, manual intervention may be used to determine how a particular audience segment corresponds to a class of users in the online environment.